• MsUltraViolet [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Hunter S Thompson was like chaotic good. Certainly not free of some reactionary "all authoritarianism bad" thought, but overall pretty cool. Against the American status quo, pro labor/the IWW, pro drug legalization, anti-search and seizure by the cops, a gun nut (but like in a cool way), outward critic of the government, especially Nixon and Bush/the Iraq war and post-9/11 fanaticism.

    He ran for Sheriff of Aspen Colorado and had a pretty fantastic platform built on these six points:

    -"Rip up all city streets with jackhammers" and "sod the streets at once ... All public movement would be by foot and a fleet of bicycles, maintained by the city police force."

    -"Change the name 'Aspen', by public referendum, to 'Fat City'. This would prevent greedheads, land-rapers and other human jackals from capitalizing on the name 'Aspen' ... These swine should be fucked, broken, and driven across the land."

    -"Drug Sales must be controlled. My first act as Sheriff will be to install, on the courthouse lawn, a bastinado platform and a set of stocks in order to punish dishonest dope dealers in a proper public fashion. Each year these dealers cheat millions of people out of millions of dollars ... it will be the general philosophy of the Sheriff’s office that no drug worth taking should be sold for money."[1]

    -"Hunting and fishing should be forbidden to all non-residents, with the exception of those who can obtain the signed endorsement of a resident- who will then be legally responsible for any violation or abuse committed by the non-resident he has 'signed for' ... By this approach-making hundreds or even thousands of individuals personally responsible for protecting the animals, fish and birds who live here-we would create a sort of de facto game preserve, without the harsh restrictions that will necessarily be forced on us if these blood-thirsty geeks keep swarming in here each autumn to shoot everything they see."

    -"The Sheriff and his Deputies should never be armed in public. Every urban riot, shoot-out and blood-bath (involving guns) in recent memory has been set off by some trigger-happy cop in a fear frenzy."

    -"It will be the policy of the Sheriff's office savagely to harass all those engaged in any form of land-rape." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Aspen